So I actually ran the Army Ten Miler

I was wondering if I was going to make it or not.

I went to bed about 9pm last night so that I could get enough rest, but dammit, I just couldn't get to sleep. I read for a bit, but I didn't doze off. I lay there for a while...and stayed wide awake. I have one of those little digital watches on my dresser--you know, the kind that beeps every hour? I heard it beep three times in a row. And at midnight, I was still awake.

Finally I got off to sleep, only to get up again at like 4:30 for the drive down into Washington DC. I had a light breakfast enroute, learning from my last long run not to eat like a pig an hour before running. And by 7AM, I was standing around down at the Pentagon along with an estimated 26,000 other runners and a few thousand more volunteers and officials. The US Army Golden Knights parachuting team jumped and opened the event. And they looked good. I wish I could have brought my camera but there was no way I was going to run with it. A singer sang the Star Spangled Banner, and everyone there, military and civilian, saluted the flag or put their hand over their heart. (Barak Obama wasn't there to ignore it like he always did before he decided to pretend to be patriotic just these past few months.)

Then someone yelled "Get ready...Go!"

That was it? No cannon? No massive cloud of doves? But ok. I can take a hint. I went.

When I showed up, I was directed to the very front of the pack for an early start since I'm missing a foot. Honestly, I didn't care to be singled out for that, but as it turned out, there were dozens of military veteran amputees all up there too, so at least I wasn't the only one. I was just the oldest, it seemed.

And when the disembodied voice yelled "GO!", we all went. And I'm proud to say that most of those young vets took up quicker paces than mine and left me behind. You go, guys.
But I'd learned my lesson about trying to keep pace with faster runners, so I just hung back with a few of my new vet friends. But on Memorial Bridge going into the District, either they dropped off or I sped up somehow, because I found myself ahead of them and alone. I came up on another group, but they also fragmented and started falling back about the time we got up near the Lincoln Memorial, and I realized that some of them were learning the lesson that I'd learned about starting out too fast.

One of that last group was a woman from Walter Reed Hospital who was out to run with the vet group. Somehow, she and I wound up running together for a long while. Along the way I saw a number of police officers that I knew and had worked with, and even though I couldn't stop to chat, the yells support that I got from each of them was a big help. And it didn't escape my notice that after I saw the first couple, most of the rest along the course seemed to be expecting me. Word travels fast when people have radios.

By this time, the real runners were all up and around us, passing like I was standing still. These are the fit freaks who run these things all the time and finish out in a little over an hour. But my goal was an hour, fifty minutes, based on averaging an eleven-minute mile. All I wanted to do was finish today. I'll beat the rest of those runners another day.

But those runners were by and large great people. Even though they were passing my on both sides because I was the closest thing to a plodding obstacle on the course, I can't recall a moment when someone wasn't yelling out support and encouragement to me, and it was often some pretty young spandex-clad gal in a sweat-soaked T-shirt. There seemed to be an endless supply of such babes on the course. (Me likee this race!) There were also cheering spectators along the race course almost the entire way. I had no idea that there would be this many people involved.

And every two miles, there were even more people, mostly soldiers, handing out water and Gatorade. I took in plenty, and it was at one of these water sites that I lost the gal I was running with. I had to slow way down because of the wet pavement, so I told her to keep on and I'd see her at the end. Alas, we never met again and her name is lost to the fog of fatigue.

The race went down Independence Avenue and made a loop up by the Capitol, but I just now realized that I was so focused on running that I didn't even look up to see it! Ah well...I've seen it before.

We went back down Independence, and I was feeling it by the time I passed the marker for mile #7 or so, but I also could tell that I still had plenty of energy left. It felt a lot better than that nine-mile practice run last week. And by the time that I cleared the last water station on 14th street just before I-395, (mile marker #8), I knew that I had this thing. It was now just a question of the final time.

I-395 was the hardest part. It's the only real inclined part of the course, and there are three or four slight but not inconsequential hills that have to be climbed. Early on in the race it wouldn't have been so bad, but here towards the end, those hills knocked out a lot of runners. I wound up passing dozens of the runners who'd passed me earlier. They were walking now...and at least two were lying on the ground getting medical treatment, including one of the amputee vets...Damn it--he came so close!

I was slowing too, but as luck would have it, I fell in with another runner, Robert from Fort Hood, Texas, an Army MP who came in to visit fellow soldiers at Walter Reed and run this race. He asked if he could run with me since we seemed to be doing about the same pace, and I agreed. I needed the motivation easily as much as he did.

We crossed the Potomac, and kept looking to see where the exit ramp was, because we knew that at the bottom, the finish line was only a few hundred yards away. I swear, that section of I-395 seemed to go on forever. But finally we hit the down ramp...and when we rounded the corner onto the Pentagon reservation, there was thie line. We both broke into a full-out sprint and ran for it, burning up every last bit of energy. Disaster was narrowly avoided when just shy of that line, a slower runner sidestepped directly in front of me. I was flying now and not terribly agile at that speed on my running foot, so I yelled a warning, grabbed him by the shoulders, and kind of move him to the left while swinging around him on the right. As dense as the pack was in that stretch, if we'd gone down, we'd have caused a major pile-up of other runners who were also sprinting in. But a calamity was avoided, no one went down, and I shot over the line one hour, forty-seven minutes and forty-four seconds after leaving the starting point. I'd made it, and I'd come in under time.

And I didn't stop.

Not once.

I. DID. NOT. STOP.

Funny thing about adrenalin...I wasn't really feeling tired or sore up to this point. But once I stopped running, and started working my way through the snack line and making my way back out of the lot, it all came down on me. I'd planned to go to a church picnic in the afternoon, but by the time I even got near home, I knew that I was done for the day. So I took a nice hot shower and a nap, and now I'm looking for something to throw on the grill. I've been starving myself for the past week, but that's officially over, right here an now. Come on, big-assed steak and beer!

Big thanks to all the people who volunteered to make this race what it was. And a bigger thanks to God for getting me there and through it today.

HERE'S THE COURSE MAP